Hundreds of people aired their complaints on Twitter about the image of Steenkamp, arguing that it was both sexist and tasteless.

Among those who condemned the paper were former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott and Labour MP Chris Bryant, who tweeted: "This is a simply despicable front page. It glories in domestic violence. @rupertmurdoch apologise."

Prescott's tweet said: "I really hope every member of the shadow cabinet thinks twice before writing for the Sun after that front page."

Among the feminist complainants was the newspaper columnist Suzanne Moore who argued that the Sun had hit "a new low". She called it "lechery over a corpse," adding: "A woman just murdered? I hope mass boycott."

Bryant continued his attack in further tweets, urging his followers to complain to the Sun's editor, Dominic Mohan.

One of them, Chelsey Sanderson, pointed out that the Sun had taken "the moral high ground" by refusing to publish the picture of a pregnant Duchess of Cambridge in a bikini but had dared to publish a murder victim in her bikini. She added: "Words fail me."

One of the most damning tweets was posted by a journalist, Ben Bold, who accused the Sun of "doing what it does best: flaunting its egregious lack of judgement, decency etc".

Many callers to Victoria Derbyshire's BBC Radio 5 Live programme on Friday expressed their outrage, with few people willing to defend the paper.

But the Sun's former deputy editor, Neil Wallis, spoke up for his former newspaper in a series of tweets. One said that the storm over the Sun page one "is totally fake" and contended it was the result of complaints from "the usual suspects who never read the paper anyway."

RG comment: What do people expect of the Sun? Sure, its front page is tasteless. Yes, it is also sexist. But the paper is like that every day in every way.

There is, of course, no harm in taking the opportunity to point it out. But I suspect the complainers are talking to the converted; in other words, people who don't read the Sun regularly, if at all (Wallis is surely right about that).

Some 7 million people are estimated to read each copy of the Sun and, though the numbers are decreasing, it remains Britain's most popular paper.

The figures may be disheartening to those who believe in better, particularly those who loathe sexism, but it's obvious, if sad, that it is deeply embedded in working class culture.

So a large slice of the British population just doesn't view the Sun's content (or the Daily Star's for that matter) in terms of sexism, which takes us back to that page 3 debate again. As for taste, it is always in the eye of the beholder.